Putin Signs ‘Foreign Agents’ Media Law As Payback to U.S.

The U.S. Justice Department previously said it would require
the news outlet RT, formerly
known as Russia Today, to register as a foreign agent. So, on Saturday, Russian
President Vladimir Putin happily reciprocated.

Putin signed
legislation that allows the Russian government to designate media outlets as
“foreign agents” if they receive funding from abroad. The law was passed in
both houses of Russia’s parliament in recent weeks.

According to Reuters, the Russian Justice Ministry last week
published a list of nine
U.S.-funded news outlets that could be affected. They include Voice of
America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and seven local–language
news outlets run by RFE/RL, Reuters said.

RFE/RL reported that its news services previously had received
warning letters from Russia’s Justice Ministry stating that affected news
outlets would be “subjected to detailed financial-reporting requirements and
required to label published material as coming from a foreign agent.”

The move was retaliation for the U.S. requiring RT America
to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which it did earlier
this month. According to RT, the U.S. threatened
legal action and a freezing of the media outlet’s assets if it failed to
comply.

The U.S. took the step as a response to alleged
Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.

As The Hill noted:

In January, RT America was singled out in a report from the
U.S. intelligence community about the potential impact that Russia had on the
2016 presidential elections.

The report from the U.S. intelligence community called the
outlet a “state-run propaganda machine” that “has positioned itself as a
domestic U.S channel and has deliberately sought to obscure any legal ties to
the Russian Government.”

RT has also contracted with Julian Assange, who runs
WikiLeaks and is suspected of leaking internal emails from the Democratic
National Committee. The intelligence report said that some employed by RT
“actively collaborated with WikiLeaks” during the presidential election.

Also on the U.S. Justice Department’s radar is Sputnik, an
English–language news outlet funded by Russia.

The U.S. Foreign Agents Registration
Act was created in 1938 and has since led to numerous criminal prosecutions
over the decades. The Hill reporter Megan R. Wilson noted that some U.S.
lawmakers are now trying to make it even stricter.

“We can’t allow foreign agents, particularly those working
on behalf of our adversaries, to skirt our laws,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne
Shaheen said in a statement reported by The Hill.

RT’s editor–in–chief, Margarita Simonyan, called the Justice
Department’s recent efforts a “war” waged on journalists by the “U.S.
establishment.” We’ll see how U.S. journalists react to Russia’s latest tit for
tat.